A process in Six Sigma where material and information flow continuously is one that has minimal waste, so one way to identify waste and improve value is to look for disruptions to flow. Here are some indicators[more…]

All process and product data in Six Sigma projects have variation; each repeated instance of any measured data point is different from the instance before. And as the collection of repeated measurements[more…]

There will most definitely be times when you will need to work with the Z transformation in Six Sigma. How often do you come across a process or product characteristic that has an average of 0 and a standard[more…]

You will need to be able to measure yield for your Six Sigma initiative. In the simplest terms, a process or characteristic can either meet or not meet its specification. Just as when you harvest the fruit[more…]

Data mining is just what its name implies — it’s the labor of digging and sorting through Six Sigma data for clues to where the improvement gems may lie. Sometimes you have to go through a lot of dirt[more…]

A useful tool in Six Sigma initiatives is the Multi-Vari Chart and sampling plan. These can greatly help your project. Here’s the step-by-step procedure for pulling intermittent data from a running process[more…]

You don’t have to wait until your multi-vari data are collected to start creating the multi-vari chart for Six Sigma. Instead, you can build the chart, incrementally, adding more to it as you collect more[more…]

The primary Statistical Process Control (SPC) tool for Six Sigma initiatives is the control chart — a graphical tracking of a process input or an output over time. In the control chart, these tracked measurements[more…]

From a quality perspective, Six Sigma is defined as 3.4 defects per million opportunities. This figure is called a Six Sigma level of quality. Sigma scores are thrown about so much that you definitely[more…]

Money matters as much as time to your business or organization's efficiency. So many people (and organizations) sign up for recurring services and then forget about them — never noticing the small credit[more…]

You can’t improve efficiency in your business or organization if you don’t know where you stand currently. Without a starting point, you have no official idea whether the changes you implement in hopes[more…]

A great starting place for identifying inefficiencies in your business is to take baseline measurements across your organization, which you can then use like a road map to your inefficiencies. Working[more…]

It’s easy to assume you know which solution to use to address a given inefficiency problem in your business or organization, but you know what they say about assuming. A responsible efficiency-enhancing[more…]

You need to follow the steps of any business efficiency plan in order to implement change, but you also need to compose a comprehensive execution plan, before you go about implementing changes. Execution[more…]

The importance of measuring your business efficiency in ways beyond mere dollars in and dollars out cannot be overstated. In fact, Harvard Business School’s Robert Kaplan and David Norton developed the[more…]

Increasing income while decreasing expenses is what people usually think of when they hear business efficiency, although it’s never quite that simple. When you’re measuring financial milestones, always[more…]

Sentiment analysis is one of the trickiest metrics to measure, but it has far-reaching implications for business efficiency. If your customers aren’t happy, that’s usually a sign of room for improvement[more…]

Time is an often overlooked resource in business efficiency, but in many ways, it’s the most valuable one. Even if you had the money to pay every employee to work 100 hours a week, you won’t generally[more…]

Measuring how you stack up against the competition and within the marketplace can unearth potential inefficiencies in every aspect of your business. For example, if your competitors are able to sell the[more…]